Henry Srebrnik
THE GUARDIAN - NOV 11, 2016
Israel’s former president Shimon Peres, who died last month at the age of 93, had a career in public service that spanned more than six decades. He held almost every senior post in Israeli politics. The presidency, which he attained in 2007, allowed Peres to travel around the world, promoting Israel’s high-tech prowess and cultural reach. “He had a very forward-looking belief in technology,” according to professor Yehudah Mirsky of Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass., and a former official of the U.S. State Department. “He was always reading work on the cutting edge of things like nanotechnology, biotech and more.” In his 1994 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, Peres had articulated his future-oriented vision. “Countries used to divide the world into their friends and foes,” he declared. “No longer. The foes now are universal: poverty, famine, religious radicalization, desertification, drugs, proliferation of nuclear weapons, ecological devastation. They threaten all nations, just as science and information are the potential friends of all nations.”
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